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Before Hannah headed inside, she stopped on the porch and turned around, as if she could sense me watching. All mothers are a little bit psychic, aren’t they? Now I watch her at the table between her husband and her brother. She doesn’t look happy or at ease. She looks worried—a furrow in her brow belying her smile.
From where I stand, hidden, watching them through the glass, they are the picture of the perfect family. Instagram-able. But I know better. What people show the world is rarely the whole truth, especially these days when everything must be curated and cropped, filtered and brightened. Real life is messy and complicated. Ugly.
The week after my dad died, I found his journal. I went through his things while my mom was out. The motorcycle crash was ruled an accident—a wet road, a turn taken too fast.
But everyone who loved him—we knew. The sadness; it took him. He had to make it look like an accident if we were going to get the insurance money. There was no motorcycle clause in his policy; he’d made sure of it.
His notebook was tucked between the mattress and the box spring on his side of the bed. My mother probably didn’t even know it was there. Every page was full—edge-to-edge—with drawings and poetry. Sad faces with exhausted eyes, line drawings of barren woods, empty rooms, broken windows.
His last entry:
There’s just too much darkness.
I’m drowning.
A sketch of a tired, stubbled, big man drinking in through his open maw a flood of ink coming from the sky.
I kept it. I carry it with me, even now. It’s the only piece of him I have.
I went through the motions after that—finished high school, went to a small private college in upstate New York, graduated with a degree in computer engineering, learned to code. I did all the things a person is supposed to do.
But I had a darkness in me, too.
It wasn’t until I took that Origins test that I understood why.
14
Bracken
Bracken pulled his truck up the long drive to his other rental property, this one far more modest than the one he called Elegant Overlook on his website, the one the shark man and his crew had inhabited.
This smaller one with just two bedrooms and a loft, great room, big porch looking out on a lovely but lesser view than Elegant Overlook, he marketed it as a couples or creative retreat. He called it Luxurious Stillness.Finish your novel. Reconnect with your spouse. Or just be, watching the hummingbirds and the sunset in peace and solitude.
The white Toyota that May, his one-person cleaning crew, drove was parked out front, hatch open to reveal buckets and supplies, a vacuum cleaner, a box of rags. It was late, the sun already below the horizon, the last vestiges of light clinging to the sky.
He walked inside and smelled the mingle of lemon and vinegar. All organic cleaning products (except in the bathrooms where only the hard stuff could combat mold), finest linens, thickest towels and plenty of them, artisanal soaps, shampoos and conditioners sourced from a local company. The kitchen could be stocked if his guests requested, chefs hired, daily maid service, in-house massage visits, what have you. Often the folks who rented Overlook wanted those things. But those who rented Stillness usually wanted to be left alone.
He could hear May singing, as she usually did while she cleaned. She had a nice voice, smoky and perfectly pitched. She’d have her earbuds in and be deep in her work. He scared the bejesus out of her at least three times a week, though really she should be expecting him. She just lost herself. That was one of the many things he liked about her.
He stood and regarded the view, a final buttery yellow light fading from the horizon line and the glowing green of the leaves, the silvery blue of the mountain shadows. In the kitchen, he looked around. Garbage had been emptied, surfaces were gleaming, paper towels refilled.
“Tidy couple,” said May coming up behind him. His turn to be startled. “Everything left as they found it. They even stripped the beds.”
He turned to regard her. Her fine brown hair, muscular arms, collarbone taut against tanned skin. She smiled, revealing straight white teeth.
“That’s nice,” he said. When she turned to head back toward the kitchen area, he admired the valentine shape of her ass, the fullness of her thighs.
He already knew that the couple had stripped the bed.
He’d watched them.
He’d watched them cook last night. Make love on the porch in front of the fire. He’d watched the wife in the shower, her body soft but pretty, youthful and full. She’d hummed, contentedly soaping herself, eyes blank and peaceful. He’d watched them sleep, curled around each other.
Earlier, he’d watched Liza shower. Leaning her delicate body against the tiles, she wept. He’d wanted to race up there and comfort her, fix whatever had been broken to make her cry so inconsolably. But that was a boundary he couldn’t cross. When she was done, she’d vomited in the toilet. Carefully wiped it down when she was done.
He’d been thinking of her ever since. Her fragility. Her vulnerability. The boundary between them. What would it take to cross over that? To hold her? Tohaveher?
They belonged to him while they were in his houses, didn’t they? He never tired of people and all their different ways. Their voices and gestures, their conversations, the way they were with each other, what they did when they thought no one was watching. He kept their secrets, though. He kept his distance. Usually.
